


everyone knows you're going to live

by song_of_staying



Category: Nimona (Webcomic)
Genre: Betrayal, Gen, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:44:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5097866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/song_of_staying/pseuds/song_of_staying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"An arm made of wood," he says, and if he sounds disbelieving, disbelief clouds all his thoughts since the tourney.</p><p>"A wooden arm. To replace the one you lost."</p><p><i>I didn't lose it, it was taken from me</i>, he thinks but would never say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everyone knows you're going to live

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Firewood - Regina Spektor.
> 
> Thank you to bigsunglasses for the help and mini-beta!

There is a woman in the village, a carpenter: her name is Aníz. She came from somewhere else, and most people call her Annis, or Annie, because it flows better. But Aníz is, still, what she calls herself.

As a boy, Ballister had hoped to apprentice with her, before his father lost all of his mother's dowry.

(This was an impressive feat, Ballister later calculated. His father only ever played on poker machines, and those only accepted dimes. Ballister’s mother had been exceedingly rich, and her dowry had come in chests and bags of gold. Even with what had to be paid to surgeons and hackers and undertakers - and Ballister only ever heard about that through insinuation and recrimination - it took _effort_ to turn that gold to silver to cash to dimes and then to spend those dimes one by one. If a machine accepted six dimes per minute, and allowing for any possible winnings, it would take nine years and four months to lose all that money. Somehow his father only needed five years.)

So far, Aníz the carpenter has been Ballister's _only_ visitor. She first arrived when he was still dazed and scattered with pain, and she talked about arms made of wood. He didn't really understand her then, so she left, and now she is back with a basket of apples and some drawings. She'd given him apples sometimes, before he’d left to become a knight.

"An arm made of wood," he says, and if he sounds disbelieving, disbelief clouds all his thoughts since the tourney.

"A wooden arm. To replace the one you lost."

 _I didn't lose it, it was taken from me_ , he thinks but would never say.

"What can a wooden arm do?"

Aníz shrugs. Her shrugs are like avalanches.

"You can lean on it. You can put it through a sleeve and pull a glove on it."

Ballister looks around. There are monitors around his bed, and an automated chamber pot underneath it. There is soothing music coming from somewhere, so soothing you keep forgetting it’s there.

"Perhaps the Institution has a better - model," he says, but even as Aníz shrugs and chooses an apple, Ballister realises there is no surprise prosthetic waiting for him. The Director already dismissed him from the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics. She explained that His Majesty couldn't afford to employ anyone but the best, and Ballister could never be the best now. He was to leave the hospital by the following day.

"Thank you," he says, and at some point his voice changed into something deeper and crowing. "I will come see you tomorrow."

She nods, and she smiles at him. Her smiles are angular, like the tables and the coffins that she makes. "You don't have to pay me right away," she says.

He doesn't know if he has money - he knows he has none that isn’t shared with Ambrosius. "Thank you," he says, and tries to think of something he could do, some way he could get dimes to turn to cash (silver and gold isn’t all that necessary, for now).

They eat and they try to listen to the soothing music.

"Aníz?" He bites through an apple seed, swallows. "Do _you_ know who His Majesty is? Why does he need the Institution? What makes him so majestic?"

“I have a sister,” Aníz says. “She is a goldsmith, and she studies the rivers. She might have something for you.”

The very last thing Ballister wants is a golden arm; but he’s too aware of her kindness to say so.

“If nothing else,” she adds, “she can teach you which questions not to ask. Goldsmiths have to take care how they speak. So do rivers. And so do former knights.” She doesn’t look worried, just contemplative. “We're not very close anymore, but I think she’ll like you. You used to be such a quiet boy.”

The first thing Ambrosius taught him was how to fill in the quiet, without saying anything of substance. It didn’t do anything to divert or charm the bigger boys, but it usually worked on the staff, and with time Ambrosius grew into his smile, and the boys grew out of their rage.

Now, Ballister can't think of anything to say, substantial or not, so he just squeezes Aníz’s hand - and oh, it’s so awkward, his body tenses with the irritation of asymmetry and the subdermal awareness there is something missing.

Ambrosius did not take his call.

"I think I can leave now," he says.

None of his monitors respond, nor does any staff come in to tell him to wait, for more results, or fresh bandages. None of the monitors ask where he would go.

"You can sleep in my workshop, tonight," she tells him, and helps him sit up.


End file.
